Unkept Secrets
by KitsuneTears
Summary: Virgil and Richie loose their secret about being Static and Gear to someone they just met, the new girl might not be someone to trust, and Ebon has a new 'puppet.' To top it all off, she didn't even mean to find out the secret...
1. New Day, New Life

_**Chapter 1**_

Virgil and Richie were walking down the hallway to their English, still exhausted from their patrol the previous night as Static and Gear. Because of this their movements could better be described as stumbling better that walking. This went especially for Richie, who was less used to late night patrols than Virgil was.

A sudden muffled "oomph!" was heard from Richie and Virgil turned around to see his friend on the floor.

Surprisingly enough, he was not alone on the floor. There was a girl, the same age as them (15, right?) under his feet. Her eyes were sort of wrinkled with pain from when Richie had tripped over her, resulting in her getting a hard kick in the stomach. She must have been kneeling on the floor to get books from the bottom of her locker when Richie fell.

She got up after furiously pushing Richie's feet off her, slammed her locker shut, and looked up to see Virgil looking at her. When she noticed that she said "Take a picture, it last's longer." With that she started to walk down the hall mumbling a line from the play 'Rent.'

"And when you're living in America, leave your conscience at the tone." Richie and Virgil watched the burnt sienna (AN: it's a paint color) haired head bob out the doorway… in the middle of the school day.

By now Richie had gotten up and he asked, "What's with her?"

Wow, with Richie being a genius, that was a REALLY stupid question. "Well, you would be offended too if someone tripped on you!" (AN: Hey, that rhymes!) Richie didn't answer, his friend was right.

The Next Day 

The next day, a new girl must have arrived, because there she was in the middle of the hallway, and no one could recognize her.

In her first class of the day, the teacher announced, "Class, I believe that we have a new student! Would you like to introduce yourself?"

The girl looked extremely confused. "But, Mr. Pascal, it's me. Cassie!" Seeing his openly blank face, she continued. "Cassandra Sanet!" (AN: anyone get the reference w/ the teacher's name? I'd be amazed if anyone did!)

It must have finally struck some thing in the teacher. "Oh, yes! Of course, Cassie! I'm sorry." Having said his apologizes, he began to drone on with a particularly boring lesson about "the amazing physical and chemical aspects of bubbles."

Except for the bit about the bubbles, the same sort of thing happened in each of her other 6 classes. In the middle of the day the day, after her fourth period, there was lunch.

While in line to get "food," she heard Richie's voice behind her, but didn't recognize it. "Check it out! The waffles bounce, honest!" Cassie immediately realized that she was being addressed. She tried it. They did. That's just plain nasty.

"I don't think that waffles are SUPPOSED to bounce." She replied. "But they're still edible, just in the way glue is." She heard him snicker, so she turned around, smiling.

Seeing who he was, the smile immediately dissolved to be replaced by a scowl. "You!"

Now, as mentioned, no one in school could recognize her, and as we all know, Richie is a part of that school. "Have we met?" He was confused, who could blame him?

"Uh, DUH! You tripped on me! I still have a bruise! Now, I don't know about you, but I don't really enjoy being kicked in the stomach and tripped over!"

"Oh… err… That was you? Look, I'm really sorry. It was an accident, really. I was tired and I wasn't really looking where I was going. I didn't see you." He said this, but still didn't recognize her. The girl from the day before had burnt sienna hair and matching eyes. The girl in front of him had layered black hair and her eyes were a dark blue. Such a dark navy, they were almost black. "I just hadn't seen you there, that's all." He looked down at his tray before repeating, "Sorry."

He was sorry. Once his dad found out that he had kicked a girl, accident or not, he decided to punish him. In other words, see how he liked being kicked while on the floor. Over, and over, and over again. Remembering that, he began to rub his miraculously unbroken rib cage.

He was brought back to the real world when Cassie responded, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, yeah. It's TOTALLY great to know that I'm invisible! What's with your chest?"

"Huh? Oh! Umm… nothing! Why?" Richie stopped rubbing his sore chest. His dad hit him from rather often, but it usually wasn't quite so hard.

"Whatever." And she walked away. '_I wonder what he's thinking.' _she thought.

Richie found a table and sat down to think for a second before he would eat his lunch.

'_Oh, man. If she found out. If anyone found out, I'd be shipped to the orphanage. That was WAY too close.' _With that thought he started to rub his chest again. He looked up to see that she was watching him intently, almost as if she was trying to read his mind… He realized what he thought the reason was, stopped rubbing, and turned to his edible rubber compound, or as the cafeteria said, "waffles," which they most certainly weren't. Virgil came up to his table and sat down.

"Hey! Sup? You met the new girl yet? I think her name's Cassandra something, not sure though."

"Hey, nothing much, yeah, and her name's Cassie Sanet. She's…uh…she's the girl I tripped over yesterday." Red was creeping into Richie's features.

Virgil looked at the girl starring at them. She was wearing a celtic knot necklace on a black string (AN: the same necklace I wear. Coincidence? You decide), a black sweater that read "I am the American dream," and was half unzipped to reveal a black t-shirt that said "Bite me" in sparkly white letters. "She looks so…different."

Suddenly, she got up and walked to their table and stood next to where Richie was sitting. She looked at Richie with… Was that pity in her eyes? "Do you have the time, to listen to me whine, about nothing and everything, all I had once."

"Huh?" the boys asked in unison. Cassie just rolled her eyes.

"You don't listen to Green Day, do you? That was from one of their songs. What I mean is, either I sit alone, or I sit with you, all the other tables are completely full, or completely empty. And since I don't feel like sitting alone… Can I sit with you guys?"

"Sure." replied Richie. "I like Green Day, but I don't think Virgil's ever heard of them. It just took me a while to get what you were talking about. I can't help being stupid." For some reason that Cassie didn't quite get, Virgil started laughing, and couldn't stop, at least not until Richie gave him an annoyed look and elbowed him. It was funny to know that the bang baby smarter than Einstein was calling himself stupid.

"Umm… Can I sit down now?" asked Cassie. Richie didn't respond, he just moved down on the bench so Cassie could sit next to him. Cassie just ignored this and sat down between the two boys instead. "You two look really drained. Did you sleep at all last night, or was sleeping through 'the amazing chemical and physical aspects of bubbles' really that exhausting?"

It was Virgil who answered. "Up late studying, ya know? History test today." In truth they had been trying (as Static and Gear of course), and failing to prevent a second big bang.

"That test isn't for two weeks." she replied.

"Told ya Virg." replied Richie. Then he decided to change the subject. He noticed something fastened in her hair with a hair clip. "Is that a key chain in your hair?"

Cassie was glad someone noticed. "Yep! It says 'You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're dumb.'" Then she motioned to a pin on her shirt "and the pin says 'I like you, you remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.' Do you like them?"

"Yeah, they're cool." Richie paused. "V, I need to ask you something about that GEAR I brought from my house last night. The walkie talkies (sp?) still have a little STATIC when you use them."

Virgil nodded. "Is this about the new SHIPment at the hardware store?" It was Richie's turn to nod. "K, ask me later then."

"Are you guys talking about the second big bang?"

"How'd you hear about that?" asked Virgil. Cassie, once again, rolled her eyes.

"Static and Gear have to fight a new outbreak of freaks and geeks. Of course it wasn't all over the news and plastered to the front page of every news paper." She took a bite of the hash brown on her tray and made a face, but still swallowed it. "Gross. At least now I know what they do with the soda bottles from the recycling bin."

Richie laughed. "I'd been about to drink my milk when you said that. I you'd said that half a second later, it would be coming out of my nose!"

"What a lovely mental image. At least now I know what I missed." commented Cassie.

Richie noticed something. "Wow! Virgil hasn't said anything for over 10 seconds. Either you're a good luck charm or he died from food poisoning." He looked to where Virgil had been sitting. "He left I guess that's not a bad alternative."

It was Cassie's turn to laugh. Virgil's voice came from behind them. "I heard that! I was getting chips. There's now way they can ruin what they didn't make. Ah, the wonders of prepackaged food."

Later 

**At the gas station**

"You like her, don't ya Rich?"

"V, who? Who are you talking about?"

"C'mon Richie. You know who I'm talking about. You like Cassie, don't you?"

"Yeah, so? It's not like she likes me back. Not after the way we met! I freaking kicked her!"

"This is great! We could go on double dates! I'd take Daisy and you'll take Cassie!"

"Told ya, she hates me. Even if she doesn't HATE me, she still doesn't LIKE me." Richie was getting a little annoyed.

**Meanwhile**

Cassie's house Phone conversation 

"You like that guy you were sitting with at lunch, what's-his- name?" Cassie was on the phone with her friend, Viv. Cassie was dying to hang up, but resisted the impulse knowing that if she did, Viv wouldn't talk to her for a week.

She sighed. "Blond hair or black dreadlocks?"

"Blond! I guess he's kinda cute, but glasses? That's so not you're style. Anyways, you were totally flirting with him weren't you?" Viv pried too much and really needed to learn to shut up.

"Yeah, but what does it matter? He's gotta hate me after the way I blew up in his face in the lunch line today. Either he hates me or he's clinically insane. God, I'm so STUPID!"

"Well…"

"Here's a tip, Viv. No comment IS a comment!"

Viv snickered. "Ohhh… Being defensive now? I didn't realize how serious it'd gotten." So Cassie hung up on her. '_Now, was that so hard? Am I really such a terrible person?_' she thought, '_Should have done that sooner.'_

Later 

**Back at the AGSOS**

"So Rich, what's you wanna ask me about at lunch?"

"Do you think Cassie's a bang baby? Maybe she can alter her appearance, or read minds, or something like that. When she was starring at me, before you sat with me at lunch, it was like she was trying to read my thoughts or something. What if she found out who we are? Who Static and Gear are."

Virgil sighed. "You know Rich, for a smart guy, you can really be really stupid sometimes, and paranoid. About her appearance, she probably just dyed her hair and got colored contacts."

'_Geez'_ thought Virgil, _'that's dumber than me thinking that Daisy's a bang baby.'_

**AN: **Thank you to every one who reminded me about the "no author's notes chapters" rule, or whatever you call it. Thank you for reading the note, and sorry for being a pain in the butt. This was my first story even though it's not finished yet. So, if it looks like it stinks, that's because it does.


	2. All In My Head

Chapter 2: Memory's Sting of Reality 

Cassie's head hurt the next day. It was like the ceiling was falling on her brain. All of a sudden, while she was busy focusing and trying to isolate the pain, and not concentrating on her poise, she fell. Before she could hit the ground, Virgil and Richie each grabbed an arm to pull her back up.

Her headache suddenly worsened, and memories of others flooded her mind.

A girl was telling the memories owner that "Mommy wasn't coming home again, Virgil." The memory changed.

It was an image of Static removing his mask. Even though she saw it from behind green tinted glass, she could still recognize Virgil. The green tint was suddenly removed and every thing went fuzzy as a blond spike of hair flopped into her vision and a pair of oval glasses were put in place and clarified the vision in the memory. Virgil spoke, "You like Cassie, don't ya Rich?"

"Yeah, so? It's not like she likes me. Not after the way we met."

Memories flashed by, every secret of the two boys revealed, all in about seven seconds. It was like someone had given the remote to a person with a very short attention span. The pain was too much for Cassie at this point. It felt as though her mind would burst. She screamed. The boys dropped her to the floor from shock at what had just happened.

She looked at the boys and ran. She was running away from all her problems. She ran to the docks, her own… shall we say "special spot." It was what had caused her to flee the school in the first place. The docks, it was a place to hide, where almost no one could find her. It was where she had gone when she'd been tripped over by Richie.

She closed her eyes, thinking about the previous night. :flashback/reflections of a sort: At fist she'd thought that the faint purple mist was her imagination. Now she knew what it was. She had been there for the second big bang, it was bang baby gas, and she was what her parents despised more than anything else, she wasn't Cassie to them anymore, or at least wouldn't be if she told them.

Yesterday she'd just thought the dye in her hair had just come out. After all, her hair was it's original black color, and her pillow had been covered in the burnt sienna color of her dye. Her eyes, well, how many of us are wondering, at 6:15 in the morning mind you, if our eyes are still the same color? She spent the larger part of that day attempting to convince her self that she was normal.

A couple of years ago, when she'd had layered black hair, she'd stood out. After getting about her hundredth suspicious glance from a storeowner, she had died her hair all brown to make her more invisible. That's what she'd always loved. Invisibility, no matter what she'd said to Richie the previous day.

The only times she'd gotten noticed was when her father hit her, and when she talked to Viv and now when she talked to Richie and Virgil. Having gotten more of the foremost than the latter in her lifetime, invisibility was preferable whenever possible.

She thought about the memory she'd accidentally transmitted to Richie and Virgil while she had been involuntarily reading their thoughts.

Flash back 

"You get back here!" Her father was in a drunken fit.

"No, I'm sick of you hitting me. I'm leaving."

"And what do you want me to tell your mother!"

"THAT YOU BOTH HAD YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!" Cassie knew she sounded like a brat, but if anyone thought that, their point of view in life was out of context. Hoping her father would rot in prison for all he'd done to her. As always her mind translated it into the words of a song. '_Isn't enough for your family. Isn't enough to for your family. But is it enough to break your spirit?' _It was too close, her soul had nearly been crushed.

She fled to the docks, one of the few places in Dakota her cell phone would work. She needed somewhere to stay, and Viv would help. And then it happened.

End Flash Back 

**At the Gas Station (again)**

"What happened today Rich? Do you think she knows who we are? Who Static and Gear are?" Virgil was looking extremely afraid, but it was partially hidden by his mask while they finished getting ready for patrol.

"I thought you said I was being stupid and paranoid. Admitting that I was right means admitting that you are stupid and gullible." Richie was still annoyed at what his friend had said when he had voiced his apparently correct theories about Cassie.

"OK! Sure fine. You were right and I was wrong. How many times will I have to say it before you can FOCUS!" Now Virgil was getting annoyed.

"A few hundred times should do it. Or just once so long as you wait a sec. For Backpack's voice recorders to come on, cuz if I trust you with the first option, I'll probably never hear it again."

"Hel-lo-o! Is brain-boy there or do I need to leave a message at the beep? FOCUS!"

Richie's face was suddenly cast in a deep troubled frown. "If she saw what I saw, she knows." The two boys flew out of the gas station. Both of them were thinking about the same person: Cassie. "Virgil? Maybe…maybe she didn't inhale that much gas. We saw how far away she'd been. Maybe it didn't mess with her brain. She… she might be good…like us."

Virgil looked at his friend with a very subdued look on his face. "Maybe…"

**Cassie at the Docks**

There she sat at the end of the docks, and she cried. For the second time in all that she could remember, she felt salty tears roll down her cheeks and off her chin, crashing to the ground. She'd always been there for her friends to lean on, she just didn't cry. The last time she'd cried, it was because she was moving and leaving behind all of her friends. She'd just finished preschool. Considering that this was the age when most kids were crying because their parents hadn't bought them the exact right kind of candy bar, she'd had the right to cry then. She had that now too.

Cassie had just lost the two people who could've really been her friends. She still had Viv, but Viv was always so… well, Viv-ish.

A last tear rolled down her cheek before she turned around to be enveloped in a dark shadow that felt solid as it closed in on her and began to cut off her air supply so that she would pass out. It was always easier without a struggle. The shadow master spoke.

"You know something that I need to Cassie. I don't know how, but you know. I'm eager to learn, and knowledge should always be shared." That was the last thing she heard for several hours, as white began to eat away at the corner of her eyes. As she lost her vision, she looked up and met the shadow master's eyes. She immediately stopped struggling. Those eyes seemed to be burned into her vision. They were cold and cruel. They were missing pupils, but they were missing something else too. They were heartless. And soulless.


	3. What's In a Name?

**AN: Sorry I didn't post these… I was really busy with the end of school coming up. ONLY SEVEN MORE SCHOOL DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM!**

Ebon had controlled Cassie for about half a month. Once he found out about her powers, he completely forgot about finding out who Static and Gear were. Why would he find out who they were and then STILL have to destroy them, when Cassie could do it for him?

Cassie looked out the dingy window of an old van. She starred out through the steadily dimming day light at her hands. '_So, this is what I am now,' _thought Cassie, '_a criminal. I'm a part of Ebon's crew. Ebon…'_

Having his name in her thoughts, the one place she'd thought she was safe, was not an easy thing for Cassie. It had been the one place Ebon didn't control. A one last safe haven. He controlled her, everything she did, everything she said, but now he was in her head too? Like I said, too much. She could mentally feel her hands clench and her jaw tighten. No part of her moved. Of course not though, while she hated Ebon with a passion, Ebon didn't hate himself nearly so much. No matter how much she fought she couldn't escape him.

She was vulnerable to his power. Psychologically, he was tearing her apart with his new ability to hack her mind. After all, it was what had kept her sane for these past two weeks. Every time she attacked Static, every time she hurt Gear. What would she do when Ebon decided it was time for the final step? With the knowledge of what he was going to do weighing on her shoulders, she would never make it through. Her last resort, stolen from her, her drop of hope for sanity, leeched from her life. Why wouldn't she hate Ebon?

**Back with Richie and Virgil**

A new villain had arrived. She was a part of Ebon's crew, she always attacked the boys with all her might, gave no mercy. She came close to killing the two once, but only Richie saw the look in her eyes. She was scared, miserable, cold, alone, and breaking down inside. Her eyes starred him down and begged for help. He couldn't understand why.

It couldn't make much sense. Why did she look so pleading to the person she was seconds from killing? Her name was Desaray. She was the most powerful Bang Baby the boys had ever seen, and probably the most afraid.

That Day:

Static threw a charge at Desaray. While her mask hid part of her face, her expression showed that she knew the two boys. She put out her hand and pointed her palm towards Static. A purple beam reached from her hand to Virgil's temple.

Virgil turned around and threw a charge at Richie. He had somewhat of Desaray's look in his eyes. He was controlled. Richie barely dodged the shot, but backpack got hit. Of course, his skates were controlled by backpack, so he was now on the ground with only a few zap caps, pitted against his best friend.

'No!' Cassie's mind screamed. She didn't want to hurt anyone, especially Gear. 'I must fight this!' With all her will power, and her love for her friends, Cassie barely managed to gain a small control over her body.

Desaray took a shaky step back, as if trying to control her leg, struggling to. Still struggling she put out her hand towards Static again. Another beam reached and changed Virgil, this one brought him to his senses. Suddenly Desaray changed herself, she still struggled and Ebon's voice came from her mouth.

"No Cassie, don't fight it. You're mine. Your powers are mine. We are one."

Desaray looked at the boys and struggled to force out the word "H-hel-help." Her eyes turned cold again and was about to attack the two boys when she was knocked out by the police.

Cassie awoke about 5 hours later to mixed murmurs and the smell of coffee that stung her raw senses. Ebon had, thankfully, left her in her body. He figured he had no use for her if she was going to be arrested. 

"She's up. Do you two want to talk to her?" There was a doctor standing in the hallway with Static and Gear. It was Gear who answered.

"Yes, but just to see if she's OK. I have a feeling she had no choice in what she did. You want to stay outside Static? Nothing personal, it's just that, after what she did, you can't really say you're not against her."

Static seemed to take offense, but said nothing and followed anyways into the room where Cassie sat. She struggled to keep her head up, her breathing was slow and shallow. She looked at the boys with unfocussed eyes, she tried to move, to apologize, she couldn't fight Ebon, and it wasn't her fault. Then she noticed something, she was tied down. Hatred flared for what Ebon had made her. She was being treated like a criminal, a terrorist.

Gear stepped into the room. Static followed. "Desaray?" he asked. "You alright?"

The girl at the other end of the room still struggled to hold up her head. Both boys stopped when they noticed that her hands were clenched into fists, but when the fists loosened at the sound of a somewhat friendly voice (however afraid it had been just so long as it wasn't hostile) the two heros relaxed. "That's no-not m-my name." Her voice was shaky.

"Then what is your name? Can you tell us?" Gear was being very patient, while, in contrast, Static's own patience was fraying. Unaware of this, the girl was hesitant to answer.

"Take m-my mask. Se-see f-for your s-self." She was shaking all over now. She was hurting everywhere, the coffee was still worsening her headache, and it took next to all of her strength to stay conscious. Before he took her mask, she spoke again. "Ri-richie, it-it wasn't me. E-ebon had me under his control." She now looked toward Static. "Vir-virgil, you believe me, don't y-you?" At the sound of his name Virgil fell against the wall as if he'd been hit by something, and slid down so that he was sitting on the floor. She knew who he was. Richie tried not to look too fazed and just reached out and pulled a red version of Static's mask off of her face.

He certainly wasn't prepared for what he saw. "Cassie! You're Desaray!" Richie and Virgil were both in shock.

"N-no. Ebon was De-desaray. I was under his control. You HAVE to believe me. You HAVE t-to HELP me." Virgil had by now gotten up and walked over to Cassie. Annoyance was etched in his features.

"No Cassie, we don't 'HAVE' to do anything other than turn you in. Don't you get it? You're a criminal, and you always will be. People like you JUST DON'T CHANGE!" Even Ritchie looked somewhat afraid and shocked by his friend's outburst. Cassie was shaking, even more so than before, she seemed to be on the verge of tears.

"People like me? Virgil, maybe you don't understand. Are you going to yell at my chair because it lets me sit in it? It doesn't have a choice. I fought to gain control over myself, but I couldn't, I couldn't stop him anymore than this chair can get up and yell at me for being tied to it. Maybe-" her voice went from furried to hushed, "maybe you're the one who won't change. Maybe you're the one who doesn't 'get it.' Maybe you should listen to what people say to find out what they have to tell you, instead of trying to find out by remembering what they did, against their will."

Gear decided to shut his friend up. "OK, Cassie. You're being recorded, so you won't have to answer these questions again. We're gonna take you home now, alright?" Cassie stopped shaking and stiffened with fear. Her eyes widened. She couldn't go home now. She could never go back to her father after all those years of what he'd done to her.

What could she tell them? Not the truth, no that was out of the question. Her mom would never take her, and her father would send her to an orphanage. That wouldn't work well. Few enough people wanted a problem child, even fewer wanted one that was a Bang Baby. "I-I can't g-g-go hom-home. I can't-t ev-ever go home."

Both boys wondered the same thing, but it was Richie who voiced their question. "Why not?" Cassie began to shake again, more violently than before.

"I-I can't. I just c-can't. Please, believe me. I just can't g-go home." Cassie closed her eyes and tried to stop the flow of terrible memories, to no avail. Every hit her father gave to her flashed before her eyes, even though they were closed tightly. She could feel the blows as if they were happening at that very moment. To Static and Gear it looked as though she was having a seizure. It looked that was to the doctor they called in too.

Cassie awoke, once more, to the stinging smell of coffee. She was surprised to see that she was lying down in a soft bed, instead of in the hard wooden chair she'd been in earlier.

Moving tentatively, she shifted, expecting to feel her whole body sore from her earlier spazz attack. She waited for a flood of aches to wash over her, but it never came. She had been able to shift freely, which meant she was no longer bound. It was then that Cassie realized that she wasn't alone in the room. Some one was waiting for her to wake up.

A voice drifted from the furthest corner of the room. "Are you awake?" The voice sounded concerned. "You passed out the other day when we were about to take you back to your house, so we took you here."

"Here? You mean we're not at the police station anymore?" Cassie was confused, her head felt as though it was splitting in two, and now some one was in this room telling her that she'd been asleep for over a day and a half. Not really your regular day, now is it? She tried to focus on the boy in the room, to no avail. Her vision was stubbornly refusing to work.

"No, of course not, you're in the hospital." Their tone changed. "Why did you have that spazz attack when we said we'd take you home?"

The voice seemed very familiar to Cassie, though she couldn't quite understand where it was familiar from. Where had she heard it before?

"Who are you?" She then mentally slapped herself for that. The question was out before she realized how, not only rude, but also how stupid it was. It was obviously either Static or Gear, since he had said 'when we said we'd take you home,' but she reasoned to herself that she wanted to know which.

"It's Gear. Listen, we have to take you to court, but first you get to go home. Due to unknown reasons, you apparently can't go home. If you can't go home, where can you stay until the trial?" They way he emphasized the words 'unknown reasons,' it sounded as though he was somewhat annoyed by it.

Cassie apparently hadn't thought of this. "I…" What could she say? She decided on the truth, maybe Static and Gear could help her… "I don't know."

Gear sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He was probably going to regret this… "Well, seeing as you already know who we are…" Damn, this was stupid, and he knew it, so why was he going to say it? " …I suppose you could stay at our headquarters, it's not really much, but," he shrugged, "it's got a couch. You could hang out there for now."

Cassie was amazed that he trusted her after everything she'd done under Ebon's control. It was then that she realized that he believed what she said. He believed what was true. She chewed the bottom of her lip. "You sure that's ok?" He didn't reply. "You didn't ask Static, did you?" She was surprised by his response. Apparently Static did know, and was okay with it… or at least he was after some professionals analyzed her body language and facial features to see if she was lying.

Cassie wondered what it would be like to stay where she would probably be hated for what she'd been forced to do, but soon decided that it would be better that staying where she might be killed. (i.e., her home) "Can you protect me from Ebon?"

"We can do our best. No promises. No one knows what will happen in the future… Except for one or two of the Bang Babies of course."

Cassie couldn't help but give a single small laugh as a smile tugged lightly at her lips. "Richie, Charles Shultz once said, 'don't worry about the world coming to an end today, it's already tomorrow in Australia.'" Suddenly she became very serious. She looked Gear's eyes as best she could through the tinted faceplate he wore as a mask, and asked, "Can I help you keep Dakota safe?"

Gear looked at her. His expression mixed a look of surprise with a nervous one. Confusion was more than hinted in his features. He didn't answer, so she repeated, "Can I help you keep Dakota safe?"

The mixed look that Gear had been giving her melted away to be replaced by a sly grin. "The first thing you will need is a name…"

**AN: There it is, I know I said I'd try to improve the chapters, but I never got the time… at least I combined a couple chapters to make this one longer. I'll post again if I get four reviews!**


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